During the Three Gaits website refresh planning session, Mark and Jolie identified a clear gap: the organization has existing video assets but lacks the flexible, modular media library needed to populate a modern, emotionally driven website. The strategy breaks into two phases — immediate and future — and prioritizes cost-effective B-roll acquisition as the foundation for long-term content versatility.
Three Gaits' existing videos ("Riding in the Moment" and the Capital Campaign video) were produced with a specific narrative purpose. They are structured, cinematic pieces — not designed to be sliced into short, standalone clips. As a result, the team cannot easily extract the variety of short-form media needed for hero sections, inline video embeds, social content, or rotating imagery.
"You've got a video that has a very specific purpose and it's laid out that way. But there's not enough there to create all this other stuff that we want to do." — Mark Hope
Before commissioning new footage, extract usable clips from what already exists.
Source videos:
- Riding in the Moment
- Capital Campaign video
Approach:
- Send both files to Wukash (video editor) for slicing
- Request 20–30 second coherent clips — logical segments with clear visual and emotional integrity
- Provide examples of desired clip types (e.g., a child on a horse, a smiling participant, a horse in the arena)
Use cases for clips:
- Inline video embed on the homepage (positioned below the hero, near the donation CTA — not autoplaying at the top, which slows load time)
- Supporting media for program and volunteer pages
- Social media and email content
Once weather permits (green grass, outdoor conditions), bring a videographer back to the farm specifically for B-roll capture.
What to capture:
- Riders on horses
- Children mounting and dismounting
- Horses leaving stalls
- Horses grazing in the pasture
- Volunteers working alongside riders
- Drone footage of the property
Target volume: ~2 hours of raw footage
Why B-roll works:
- Significantly cheaper than produced, interview-driven video
- No scripting, direction, or orchestration required
- Highly versatile — the same footage can be repurposed across the website, social, email, and future campaigns
- Drone + handheld combination maximizes variety
"What you need is like two hours of B-roll. And he can do some with a drone, he can do some with his camera. And then you take that and you can just slice and dice." — Mark Hope
B-roll production is the most cost-effective video investment available to a nonprofit. The expensive elements of video production are interviews, scripted segments, and cinematic direction. Raw environmental footage requires minimal setup and can be captured in a single day, yielding months of usable content.
Based on the session discussion, the preferred homepage video placement is:
This approach balances emotional impact with performance — a lesson drawn from observing that Hearts & Horses' video hero, while visually compelling, noticeably slows their site.